Featured Glass turquoise clip-on earrings

Hi everyone,

A while ago I bought these earrings and would like to hear your opinion on them. I bought them cheap as costume but they somehow look to me too well made and sophisticated as design so I am wondering what they might be. I am right in my assumption that they are hand made? Or hand hammered? They are not very heavy for the size so I assume they are void. The only mark they have is "Italy". The clip looks different from the body of the earrings, dull and with green spots while the body is shiny. They are domed and in two layers, the upper layer stands at about 2 cm from the lower one (where the clips attach), and they are about 3 cm in diameter. The stone looks as glass, I cannot test it. Also the central cab looks different in color than the smaller ones that are faceted.

Below are some photos, the best ones I was able to produce, would appreciate all opinions on them. Thank you for looking!

 

Good sixties costume, I like those. They’re rather Etruscan Revival.

 

Thank you, OBB, very much appreciated!

 

They are very attractive and unusual.

 

Beautiful, Iva. They scream Italian, and I'm with obb, Etruscan Revival style.

 

Thank you, pearlsnblume!

 

Thank you, Any, I appreciate it!

I was also thinking about Etruscan revival but when I did some Google lens search nothing similar came up so I assumed I was wrong.

They look to me quite well done for costume or at least for the costume I am used to What do you think, are they made by hand or cast? The decorative pattern looks not even to me but I maybe wrong. There is no logic for a costume piece to be hand made, though.

 

I don't know if a design like this could have been cast in its entirety.
Looks like the arched shapes were cast and soldered on the base plate. The mounts of the 'stones' also look soldered.
So my guess is hand assembled and soldered, using cast design elements.

The originals would have been made by hand, and casts made from those originals.

 

Thank you, Any, for your insights. Yes, it makes much sense, and explains the resemblance with the original Etruscan pattern. But then it is unusual to make by hand costume, isn't it? I'd assume that costume was mass production and thus entirely machine made. Or maybe there was higher end costume and lower end costume and more effort was put in the first (not speaking about the trade mark costume like Chanel). Interesting.

 

These are certainly better quality costume, and you're right, costume jewellery was made in different qualities.

 

Oh, there’s some fabulous hand made costume out there.

 

Your earrings are very attractive. I agree with Any Jewelry that they're hand assembled and hand soldered using cast design elements, which could have been purchased from a different company.

One of the main clues that your earrings are factory-made costume jewelry is the way the center cabochon is set. The tips of the bezel setting stand straight (not curved to fit the cabochon), which makes it quick and easy for semi-skilled workers to glue in the stone.

In handmade jewelry, a skilled jeweler would use a special burnishing tool to push bezel points in to hold the cabochon in place (without or with glue). I suppose it’s possible there’s some handmade jewelry with cast bezels, but there would probably be other signs that it’s handmade.

I also agree with OBB that there’s fabulous handmade costume jewelry out there, but it’s probably more likely to be called “art jewelry,” which can be made from inexpensive materials but command high prices because of the design and/or use of unconventional materials.

 

Thank you, Joan, for the vast and useful explanations! I am a complete outsider in jewelry so for me it is very interesting to read about it. I am more of a researcher rather than a collector

Here, where I am, for historical reasons it is very seldom to find better quality costume from the West (and in general Western costume), these earrings are an exception so they caught my attention. Probably some middle rank nomenclature was sent to the West on business and bought them for his wife in 1960s and now they ended up at the flea market.

 

You're probably right about how the earrings ended up at the flea market. I didn't realize I'm in a different part of the world than you so I better understand how these earrings caught your eye and caused you to wonder if they were handmade.

I'm in the Midwest USA and see non-western jewelry in thrift stores here, but most if not all was made for export. The little I know about traditional jewelry made for the local market in other parts of the world I've learned from the experts here.

 

Yes, place matters very much. our part of the world was closed behind the Iron Curtain for almost 50 years, and we were not allowed to travel freely. It is almost impossible to find here US jewelry, I learned from this forum about Trifary or Coro, or other famous American costume makers. Some European marks are known here although also impossible to find. Here there is a lot of Czech glass and Baltic amber, also coral from the Middle East.

The countries in the socialist block were assigned specialisation in production of different goods, and jewellery was Czech specialisation because of glass making traditions, and USSR - because of amber deposits. The export jewellery (I mean exported to the West) was of much higher quality than the jewellery sold on the local market (local I mean Comecon market). Precious metals and stones were not sold locally, they were exported, and one had to have inherited family gold from before 1944 in order to wear golden jewellery. In my country there was some craft jewelry locally produced (made of wood, leather, and semiprecious minerals) and that's all, and they were ridiculously expensive. It was not like in the Western world where there was abundance of goods (incl jewelry) both locally made and imported.

 

Very interesting to read about the jewelry "industry" and history where you are.

It's kind of sad that the US has lost so much of it's costume jewelry manufacturing to other countries. In the 1940s and 50s, the tiny state of Rhode Island was known as the Jewelry capital of the world, with hundreds of firms located there, including Trifari and Coro. Now it's mainly higher-end jewelry companies there.

But I read that some of the old factories still have stockpiles of findings, chain, crystals, etc and are being brought back to life with workers using the old machinery and supplies to create new costume jewelry. I think I read that's happening in Europe too???

 

Every place has its history. Very interesting for me to read about Rhode Island as the capital of US costume jewelry. Indeed, it is pity that this tradition stopped and these factories were replaced by more expensive and less affordable companies.

It is indeed good to revive this tradition in USA and not only. I haven't heard of it in Europe, here in BG there is no jewelry factory, only local artisans making silver and amber, and selling online and in small shops.

But I know for sure that Jablonex, the Czech glass manufacturing giant from the socialist times, was privatised into several smaller units and at least one of them (called Preciosa) is currently producing crystal and glass jewelry. Jablonex was the successor of the many small jewerly businesses in the old town of Gablonz (now called Jablonec) in Bohemia. Jablonex items were extremely popular everywhere in the socialist world, incl. in BG.

The ladies from UK and France may have information about the state of affairs in their parts of Europe.